Life of an Orientation Assistant

This year I was an Orientation Assistant for RIT's New Student Orientation. Basically this means I worked during orientation with the freshman once they moved in! Everyone working with orientation moved in early (some moved in as much as 2 weeks early!) just for training so we could put on an awesome orientation! And I don't know about the freshman, but I had an awesome time going to all of the events during orientation!

During training before the freshman moved in, all of us in the orientation staff were able to get to know each other better and were trained on how too deal with different situations if any difficult situations arose. We also had a friendly competetion between all of the OA (Orientation Assistant) teams. All of the OAs were divided up into 9 teams and throughout the 5 days of training we all competed against eachother in fun competitions and "Olympic Day." It was all really fun and helped us all get to know eachother over the 5 days and become really close!

Once the freshman arrived was when even more fun started! Move-In day was crazy but lots of fun to see everyone! It was neat seeing move-in day from the other side, or as not as a freshman anymore. Then over the next couple of days we met our orientation group (a group of freshman of all different majors), saw numerous presentations, and went to tons of fun events! My orientation group was awesome and it was great getting to know them all! All of the WOW (Week of Welcome) events at night were also a blast! There was a comedy show, an illusionist, a hypnotist (my favorite), live acoustic music, and tons of other events all going on at night so there was always something to do!

Orientation is over now and classes has started. Time to get back to reality. Being an OA was tons of fun and I definately plan on doing it again next year!

Here's a picture of some of my OA team members (Team 8 Represent!) and President Destler!